Ghanda > Ghanda's Quotes

“Why do we tell stories? They are a universal human experience. Every culture I’ve ever visited, every people I’ve met, every human on every planet in every situation I’ve seen…they all tell stories. Men trapped alone for years tell them to themselves. Ancients leave them painted on the walls. Women whisper them to their babies. Stories explain us. You want to define what makes a human different from an animal? I can do it in one word or a hundred thousand. Sad stories. Exultant stories. Didactic morality tales. Frivolous yarns that, paradoxically, carry too much meaning. We need stories.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

“Darkness, though, grows like a cave formation. Slow drips from the uneasiness harden over the surface of a slick knob of pain. Over time, the darkness crusts in unpredictable layers, growing at such a pace that one doesn’t notice it has filled every cavern under the skin until movement becomes difficult or even impossible.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, All the Crooked Saints

“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”
― Sarah Williams

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
― C.S. Lewis

“The price for being intelligent enough to be the first species to be fully aware of the cosmos might just be a capacity to feel a whole universe’s worth of darkness.”
― Matt Haig

“I was looking for a miracle, but I got a story instead, and sometimes those are the same thing.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, All the Crooked Saints

“But then again, there’s nothing intrinsically valuable about any kind of art. That’s not me complaining or making light. It’s one of the most wonderful aspects to art—the fact that people decide what is beautiful. We don’t get to decide what is food and what is not. (Yes, exceptions exist. Don’t be pedantic. When you pass those marbles, we’re all going to laugh.) But we absolutely get to decide what counts as art. If Yumi’s people wanted to declare that rock arrangements surpassed painting or sculpture as an artistic creation…well, I personally found it fascinating. The spirits agreed.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

“The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake.

Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?

We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.

They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to middle Earth.”
― George R.R. Martin

“Athshe, which meant the Forest, and the World. So Earth, Terra, meant both the soil and the planet, two meanings and one. But to the Athsheans soil, ground, earth was not that to which the dead return and by which the living live: the substance of their world was not earth, but forest. Terran man was clay, red dust. Athshean man was branch and root. They did not carve figures of themselves in stone, only in wood.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Word for World is Forest

“The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.”
― Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

“Uităm ușor, pentru că ne e mai comod, ca să ne protejăm de lucruri care ne dor foarte tare și care altfel ne-ar sparge din interior în mii de bucăți. Care altfel ne-ar distruge într-o clipă, fără să fim pregătiți. De aceea îmi place mie să dorm. În somn poți să te recompui pe tine, cel spart, dar fără să te deranjeze când te trezești și ai uitat ce ai făcut din tine.”
― Alexandru Voicescu, Malad

“Sfântul pricepu astfel că în golurile limbii, acolo, între o literă și alta, între un sunet și altul, în liniște, sunt lumi întregi, vaste peisaje irigate de râurile nerostitului, lumi împăturite-n lumi, lăsate să dospească în ignoranța omului care crede că, atunci când tace, vorbele nu se urnesc.”
― Flavius Ardelean, Bășica Lumii și a ne’Lumii

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible

“What do you want? Because if you don’t want something, you’ve got nothing. You are adrift, you are washed away, and then buried under the snow and the shadows. And when, in the spring, the snow melts, no one will remember where you were frozen and buried, and you will no longer be anywhere.”
― Nick McDonell, Twelve

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: (1) It's completely impossible. (2) It's possible, but it's not worth doing. (3) I said it was a good idea all along.”
― Arthur C Clarke

“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but 'That's funny...”
― Isaac Asimov

“It has occurred to me more than once that holy boredom is good and sufficient reason for the invention of free will.”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

“Cuplurile de la celelalte mese îi urmăreau cu zâmbete ironice pe faţă. Nu, relaţiile lor nu vor deveni niciodată aşa, mâinile lor nu vor dărâma niciodata cafele şi ochii lor nu vor scăpăra niciodată ca ai celor doi care stăteau în picioare tăcuţi, privindu-se ca nişte străini care, nu se ştie cum, au ajuns să se cunoască prea bine.”
― A.R. Deleanu, Acluofobia. Zece povestiri macabre

“Rhaegar fought valiantly, Rhaegar fought nobly, Rhaegar fought honorably. And Rhaegar died.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords

“Love is not the absence of logic
but logic examined and recalculated
heated and curved to fit
inside the contours of the heart”
― Tammara Webber, Easy

“Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you'd most like not to lose.”
― Neil Gaiman

“Se uită în jur, căutând locul în care să sape o ieșire, să slăbească fortăreața de beton-armat, să se facă auzit. Își lipi palmele de zidurile surpate și începu să tragă și să împingă, să mute și să măture, să ridice și să arunce. În jurul lui se lăsa noaptea, dar el nu știa, nu vedea, nu simțea, el săpa și lupta cu molozul, neobosit, om.”
― Flavius Ardelean, Bizaroproze

“Văd omul cum se uită la mine, încercând să înțeleagă ceva, dar nu mă vede, doar eu îl văd, și știu că omul nu e, că omul nu a fost și că omul nu va fi. Că nu va mai fi.”
― Flavius Ardelean, Bizaroproze

“Uită de păpușar, de sfori și luptă. Luptă pentru tine, pentru liniștea ta. Doar așa o să poți lupta pentru ei. Dar dacă tu nu te întorci la realitate și nu o înfrunți cu aceeași indiferență, totul e inutil. Să trăiești într-un balon de plastic nu are niciun avantaj. Izolarea aduce cu ea fantezia și nebunia. Iar apoi, când ajungi la suprafață, nu te mai recunoști. Și asta e cel mai trist, să simți că trăiești în corpul și mintea unui străin.”
― Adina Speteanu, Îngeri de gheaţă

“And Olvos said to them: “Why have you done this, my children? Why is the sky wreathed with smoke? Why have you made war in far places, and shed blood in strange lands?

And they said to Her: “You blessed us as Your people, and we rejoiced, and were happy. But we found those who were not Your people, and they would not become Your people, and they were willful and ignorant of You. They would not open their ears to Your songs, or lay Your words upon their tongues. So we dashed them upon the rocks and threw down their houses and shed their blood and scattered them to the winds, and we were right to do so. For we are Your people. We carry Your blessings. We are Yours, and so we are right. Is this not what You said?”

And Olvos was silent.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

“De multe ori ne întrebăm dacă toate lucrurile pe care le trăim sunt oare conectate între ele, parte a unei deveniri care să ducă spre un rezultat în care am crede și pe care îl înțelegem și cu care să fim de acord privind în perspectivă, sau sunt doar bucăți puse anapoda, experiențe pe care le simțim reale, dar indescifrabile, străine de noi.”
― Alexandru Voicescu, Malad

“Forgetting... is a beautiful thing. When you forget, you remake yourself... For a caterpillar to become a butterfly, it must forget it was a caterpillar at all. Then it will be as if the caterpillar never was & there was only ever a butterfly.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

“Speranța e doar în infinitul posibilităților.”
― Alexandru Lamba, Arhitecții speranței